How meditation and mindfulness can help you overcome a porn addiction

One of the ‘strategies’ that has helped me to overcome my porn addiction is daily meditation. The main benefit of meditation for pornography addiction is increased self-awareness, with a strong secondary benefit being mental clarity. For an ongoing porn addiction, these can be extremely valuable tools to have at your disposal.

In this post, we’ll be looking at some of the different traits of someone under the influence of the Porn Demon and how meditation can minimise, if not outright counter, these traits.

We will not be looking at how to meditate, or other benefits of meditation, but rather how specifically meditation has helped me – and can help you – to overcome this addiction.

Mental clarity vs brain fog

Brain fog and mental clarity are often understood as opposites. The former is an inability to focus. It’s having a hazy memory and unclear thoughts. Mental clarity, on the other hand, is the opposite – sharper focus, clearer thoughts, and reliable memory.

One way that we can think about brain fog is that it’s a self-fulfilling cycle. The lack of focus and cloudy mind can lead you to do things you don’t want to do – that is, turn to porn. It takes away your higher self’s ability to rationalise and causes you to act more instinctually. And what’s the biggest human instinct we have? Reproduction.

Seeing as our brains cannot tell the difference between PMO and actual sex, our foggy minds are driven, primitively, to porn. Which, in turn, creates further brain fog…

Yet, we can break this cycle through mental clarity. By lifting the fog, we’re less driven to PMO.

Mental clarity comes most often through meditation, although daily journaling and mindfulness exercises can also help.

Self-awareness to catch yourself

One of the more powerful uses of self-awareness – both in relation to porn addiction and everyday life – is the ability to catch yourself when your thoughts start running wild. Here, self-awareness allows you to notice your thoughts and actions and bring yourself back to the present moment.

Self-awareness can help you to take back control of your mind and your actions from the Porn Demon.

How does this help with overcoming a pornography addiction?

On more than one occasion, I’ve been able to prevent a relapse purely by noticing my thoughts and actions.

Sometimes, what happens for me ahead of relapse – and I’m sure you can relate – is a kind of surrendering of control and beginning to go through the motions. To start operating on autopilot; to start the process towards relapse, habitually.

And it’s in those moments after I’ve ‘locked in’ to the ‘goal’ of relapse that self-awareness has helped me. I’ve been able to snap myself out of the stupor and realise ‘what the fuck am I doing?’.

That’s how self-awareness can help prevent a relapse. It allows you to catch yourself before you go too far.

So, if 10 minutes of daily meditation can help you prevent 1 relapse a day, would it be worth it?

I’d argue yes.

How to find porn disgusting using self-awareness

Something that has switched porn from a dark pleasure to something disgusting is being mindful throughout the process of relapse. Instead of surrendering control on one particular occasion, I acted mindfully. I looked at every type of porn I’ve ever found arousing, and just thought about how wrong it was. Particularly the darker stuff.

On a slight tangent, I found that the darker stuff was more arousing because it was more wrong. It was abnormal, emasculating, and sickening. That’s why I liked it; because I could escape from reality into something ‘pleasurable’ that was so different to everyday life.

It was only through being mindful during this process that I realised how fucked up it was.

It’s like when the lights come on in the club. Your vision and thoughts are no longer obscured by darkness, this temporary external world, and you are brought back to reality. The strength of the external influence you were under is almost instantaneously gone.

That doesn’t mean that next time you’re in the club, you aren’t tempted to do the same thing. When you’ve had a few beers and a girl keeps looking at you… it’s difficult to say no.

The power of the Porn Demon works in the same way.

But what it does mean is that any time you’re not in the club, that feeling of disgust lingers. It means that the next time you’re in the club, you’re aware of that previous feeling and so have a better chance at avoiding any problems before things go too far.

And that’s a useful tool to reduce the likelihood of relapse. When you can feel yourself slipping, the simple thought of ‘but I think porn is disgusting’ can be the one thing you need to stay strong.

The one strategy that helps you with that initial mindfulness, to create the feeling and awareness of disgust, is daily meditation.

So that’s how meditation and mindfulness have helped me to overcome this addiction. By copying my strategies, you can experience similar success.

If you are interested in this topic, leave a comment and let me know, and I’ll write some follow up content.

Thanks for reading. Your support is greatly appreciated, man. I hope I’m able to help you.

Until next time, Stay Triumphant.

James